


In which Ikarus falls (in love, in lust, in life)

by Blue_bird16



Category: The Bastards Crew, The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Attempted Murder, Burning alive, Drowning, Gen, Graphic Description, Implied Cannibalism, Kidnapping, Murder, Starvation, all around fun times!, inhumane treatment, it's between the ~ marks if you want to skip that bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 18:51:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19156882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_bird16/pseuds/Blue_bird16
Summary: Ikarus was raised by a boiling toxic sea. He'll carry that with him for the rest of his life, stretching out unending before him.





	In which Ikarus falls (in love, in lust, in life)

**Author's Note:**

> not a particularly happy piece? anyway here's my bastard boy Iky whom i love (there are graphic descriptions of drowning and burning alive that begin at a ~ mark and then end at a ~ mark if you want to skip that. Not important to plot tbh.)

Ikarus Peripléko never met his parents. He was raised by his much older brother, Daidalos, who didn’t like at all speaking about them, so to Ikarus they were complete perfect strangers. By the time Ikarus was seven many people thought Daidalos was his father anyway, with his stern demeanor and well-kept beard, and at that point it was easier to just go along with it.

Despite the absence of his parents and the occasional gruffness of his kind brother, Ikarus had a lovely childhood on the small moon, Crete. His brother raised him well, earning enough money with his clever little inventions and automatons to keep them fed and under a roof. Ikarus, when old enough to have enough motor control to work the finer aspects of the inventions, was always glad to help his brother, and they made many games surrounding the Making.

When Ikarus was ten, Daidalos fell in love (as mortals are wont to do). Of course, having lived a life filled with metal and gears for as long as Daidalos was comfortable remembering, his knowledge of bone and flesh was somewhat lacking.

He sired a son with a birth brutal and violent, his life claiming his mother’s before he ever even opened his eyes. The baby was named Perdix, and Daidalos set himself to raising another child.

Ikarus doted on his nephew with all the love and joy a young boy had to give. He took to caregiving with a grace not even Daidalos possesed, which Daidalos wasn’t sure to be grateful for or envious of. Perdix grew to be a happy child, happy to play and happy to help and happy to build. It soon became apparent that Perdix was the brightest of the three of them, and not just in terms of intelligence: the boy could easily be mistaken for a sunbeam when happy enough. Ikarus could not have loved another being as wholly and completely as he loved his nephew, and everyone knew it. Especially Daidalos.

The trio lived a further seven years in a handbuilt bliss near the boiling oil sea. Word of the growing City and its wars of conquest reached them on the moon of Crete, of course, but they reasoned the politics of the planet below didn’t concern them.

Until one day, they did.

Minos, the meanest motherfucker on this moon with the biggest wallet and the land to prove it, got it in his mind the growth of the City below them was just a plot to overthrow his dynasty, specifically, and expose his... _failed little beast_. See, Minos had plans of his own: overtake all of Crete, and then the world below. Mad? Certainly, but not implausible. After all, his _failed little beast_ could come quite in useful when needing to subdue the masses, unstoppable as it was.

Only problem was securing what he already had, his paranoia would whisper in his mind. But that was alright, Minos reasoned. After all, he still had a few sons roaming around, and word on the street was that they were very clever at Building.

Kidnapping them wasn’t difficult. A life of code and gears may have made their minds fast and fingers faster, but fighting was not part of their combined skillset. It helps that Perdix was grabbed first. Ikarus would do whatever it took to keep Perdix unharmed, and Daidalos was honor-bound to protect his small family, even from his own father.

Yes, Minos sired Daidalos and Ikarus. Their mother, terrified of Minos, had fled not long after Ikarus’ birth and Minos had no cares for actually raising his heirs and left it to Daidalos. However, he did put in a token effort to their wellbeing. After all, clever inventions and pretty automatons paid well, but the truth behind Daidalos’ consistent wealth was his bloodline.

Not that Ikarus or Perdix had known that, not until Minos himself broke the news to them.

Minos locked the three of them into a dark room filled with technological goodies with the broadest of parameters: “Build me a system that can protect my property even from the likes of you.”

It was long, hard, grueling work. Daidalos descended into a frenzy, writing and discarding code almost as fast as his brain could work through the equations. Ikarus scrambled to keep up, salvaging what worked from his brother’s ideas before they were all lost in a jumbled junkpile with the truly worthless stuff. Perdix never lost his smile, but it did dim as time went on.

And time did go on. It seemed as if the Peripléko family were doomed to failure in Minos’ quest, and therefore doomed to die in the room.

Minos, disappointed with their continued failure, put out a call for an old family doctor, known for her less-than-moral methods that got whatever job her clients needed done, done.

The arrival of Dr. Carmilla was probably not as dramatic as she would’ve liked, but she had a job to do. The Periplékos, at this point, were run incredibly ragged and on the brink of dehydration, their skin sallow and shriveled, starvation causing their bones to jut out in strange and sharp angles.

For Daidalos, clutching at his own cramped and contorted hands, she created new ones, delicate and beautiful, to aid him in his delicate operations, and part of a new brain, to aid him in his beautiful computations. For Ikarus, breaths rasping through bloody and cracked lips, a new set of lungs and the pipes to go with them, so he could breathe motivation to his family in his new, strange, wondrous voice. For Perdix, the cleverest, who could hardly see straight anymore from checking and double-checking the work they did, she gave new eyes, ones that never failed, never blinked, and ever shined bright to combat the darkness of the room. They all received wings as well, for flair or cruel irony, it’s hard to say (and Dr. Carmilla was nothing if not dramatic at every possible moment).

The operations were long, painful, and cruel, but by the time she was done, Minos had the Mechs he wanted to do his job.

And do the job they did. Working faster and more efficient than before, Minos’ Labyrinth, a horrifying and wonderful and twisting work of dreadful art, was complete, and almost ready to present. The final problem was a powersource.

See, in the time it took the Periplékos to complete the Labyrinth, Minos had overtaken the rest of the moon Crete, and his sights were resting heavy on the planet below and its growing City. Minos’ goals would require a lot of computational power, and at high speeds to boot, and the Periplékos couldn’t figure out a power source capable of running all of it.

Until Daidalos’ new brain came up with a genius, awful idea.

The human brain is a wonderful thing, and with his calculations, done in the rare moments both Ikarus and Perdix were both curled up together to sleep, what Minos owned currently would only require two of them. And, well. They weren’t willing, but he had two perfect human brains at his ready disposal.

He started with his own young son a week later when they were both once again asleep. Tackle the most emotionally difficult hurdle first, Daidalos reasoned, and the other would be easier.

What his new brain didn’t reason out was the pain having your brain forced to work on something you yourself could barely comprehend would cause. The operation itself went by without a hitch, Perdix’s hair littering the floor after a careful shave and his breathing never leaving the sleep deep rhythm as Daidalos sealed his fate with a twist of a wire.

The screaming didn’t start until Daidalos was standing over Ikarus with the scalpel, his looming and demented form being the first thing Ikarus saw when his eyes snapped open at the sound of his worst nightmare being realized.

The room was dark. It was always dark. Perdix’s body was thrashing, as if suffering some grand mal seizure, his jaw locked wide with an inhuman wail crashing from his young lungs, his gifted eyes wide and glowing and throwing beams of light wherever he looked. The Labyrinth was taking its time in working itself into Perdix’s neurons and synapses, creeping and slow and inevitable. Just next to his stiff and trembling form, Daidalos and Ikarus were fighting over the scalpel.

Too long working on one project in a desperate bid for freedom may have atrophied their muscles, their only fighting experience may be their own kidnapping, but nothing mattered more in that moment than _who got the scalpel_.

Wild beasts couldn’t have fought more ferociously than Ikarus and Daidalos did that night. Biting, clawing, sobbing, kicking, shouting explanations and demanding why and defending dishonorable actions growing louder and louder and louder as Perdix’s screams died quieter and quieter and quieter.

Eventually, it was done. Entire days could have passed in the struggle, or maybe it was only seconds. Either way, Perdix’s eyes were forever closed, too late to be saved now, and Daidalos lay bloody and broken at Ikarus’ feet, breathing shallow and labored.

Ikarus still stood, barely. Blood streaked his heaving chest, owners undeterminable. His wings, much like Daidolas’, were broken, nearly fully detached, sparking and sending powerful shocks through his body (those shocks were how he defeated his own brother, after all. Overloaded the mechanized portion of his brain, shorted him out into a coma). The scalpel was clenched in his shaking, terrified fist.

Ikarus raised the scalpel, and slashed down with one final, agonizing wail. His unused, silver wings fell to the ground with a deafening clatter, leaving behind nothing but their sparking, jagged sockets and arcing electrical scars across his torso. Ikarus staggered to Perdix’s side, but it was much too late. Perhaps if Daidalos hadn’t struggled for so long, Perdix might have been saved, but his consciousness was the Labyrinth’s, now, a terrible new monster that yawned and hungered for more life even as it consumed Perdix’s.

Ikarus cried. There wasn’t much else he felt he could do. Daidalos’ betrayal burned through him hotter than the wires of his shed wings, and Perdix was now...Perdix was _gone_. What _could_ he do?

A voice in his mind whispered, as it so often did, of Minos’ quest, of how to finally get free and see the sun again. Hells, Ikarus would gladly look out on the toxic oil sea again if it meant he wasn’t in this fucking room anymore.

Ikarus gathered himself, kicked his useless wings away from him, and strode over to where Daidalos’ notes were. If he still knew his brother, then he kept fastidious notes on his projects when he thought they would succeed. (And, judging by his previous actions…) Ikarus knew the Labyrinth was running. Perdix being hooked up to it set off a glow similar to his eyes-- _nodon’tthinkaboutthatthinkaboutgettingout_ \--so obviously something worked. But not all the way, not completely. Ikarus didn’t know how he knew, but the Labyrinth still wasn’t complete. And if the Labyrinth wasn’t complete, then Ikarus wasn’t getting out.

Reading through Daidalos’ notes brought fresh tears in his eyes, the handwriting still gruesomely comforting even as the blood dried across his face, but he didn’t have time for emotionality right now. No, right now, Ikarus needed to finish the Labyrinth and save himself, even if he couldn’t save-- _nostopitdonthinkaboutitanymore_.

The notes were a quick read, and Ikarus a quicker study. Keeping the relative sheet near him, it was almost too easy to hook Daidalos up to the Labyrinth. He stepped back, dried blood flaking off his skin with every move like old mud, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And……... _waited_.

The Labyrinth was working. He checked, double checked, _ignoredthewhimperingbodiesintheroomwithhim_ , triple checked. The Labyrinth was definitely working, he could even see the logs of Minos accessing it and spreading it throughout what was left of Crete.

But he was still in The Fucking Room.

It took him a bit to notice, but food was no longer being delivered. It had never been delivered with any regular consistency before, but. At least one meal should have been delivered in the time since the Labyrinth started up, right?

It took some more time for it to really sink it, and when it did all Ikarus could do was rage: he had been abandoned in The Fucking Room. He screamed, he beat his fists bloody again against the walls, he slammed his body against where he remembered where the door was, but the walls were too thick for him to do anything. By the time he considered shutting down the Labyrinth somehow, he had already been locked out, and his hands were too damaged and his mind too stressed to work out a way back in.

So he sat. He cleaned Perdix, being careful with the sutures on his scalp. He waited.

And waited.

He didn’t know how long he had been sitting motionless in that humming, glowing, too-warm, _toolonelytoocrampedtooempty_ room when the knock came. He didn’t know how many knocks came before he realized what the sound actually was, but his body was too weak and throat too out of practice all he could manage was a hoarse whimper in response, the loudest thing in the room ever since the bodies had stopped responding to any outside stimuli.

To his great surprise, however, the door creaked open anyway. Light, the brightest he’s seen for _so long_ , bled from the opening, momentarily blinding Ikarus and stinging his eyes. When he could finally blink the tears away, there was a strange man standing there.

A new man. Not the bodies on the floor, not Minos, but...someone else.

“--said there were a few live ones in here,” he was saying to something in his hand, gold eyes scanning the room while his nose wrinkled at the smell. His voice was lilting, a gravelly undertone to it and dressed in an accent Ikarus had never before heard.

He tried speaking again, achieving nothing but a slightly louder croak, but without the door between them it managed to catch the man’s attention.

“Call ya back,” the main said into the device, then centered all of his attention on Ikarus. It was almost a physical weight, the man’s gaze, flooding Ikarus’ body with the awareness of being Perceived, Finally, Again. It was a beam of light falling on a pale flower trapped under a rock, and Ikarus unfurled to it as slowly but inevitably as a _tournesol_. He swallowed, throat clicking with its own dryness, and refused to blink.

“How long ya been here, kid? Minos said you’d oughtta be dead by now,” the man asked, his tone less irritated now. Ikarus just shook his head, mesmerized by the way the light from the open door played with the shadows across the man’s dark jaw.

He sighed, ran a hand through his dreads, and just stared back at Ikarus for a moment. Then, slowly, a grin spread across his lips, and Ikarus had never before seen a sunrise so beautiful.

“Well, come on, then. It’s about time someone got ya outta here,” he said, offering a slender hand. Ikarus stared again for a moment longer, and weakly raised his hand to take it. Unfortunately, his hands still shook and his arm was no longer used to movement, and failed him before he could reach. The smile, if anything, grew wider. Ikarus wanted to cry again, never wanted to leave this man’s sight again, just wanted to _touch a warm, present person again_ , and frustration welled inside him faster than he could control it.

“Hey, now, kid, no need to cry about it. If ya need help, why didn’t ya ask?” the man said, moving in closer with another slight wrinkle of his nose at the smell. Ikarus just cried silently, letting his large, warm hands maneuver Ikarus into a position easily carried.

He whimpered when those hands brushed against the still-painful wing sockets, but the man saved him from further embarrassment by not acknowledging it.

“Name’s Apollon, since we’re gettin this friendly. You must be Ikarus, Minos ‘as said a lotta ‘bout ya. Said ya helped the others make his new system,” Apollon said. Ikarus could only nod, mouthing ‘Apollon’ over and over to himself as he continued watching the man’s mouth move. “We’re gonna owe a lot to ya, kid. Real important work you did, crafting that thing. You’re gonna be a legend!”

Apollon chuckled slightly, the rumble a pleasing sensation against Ikarus’ cold body. Apollon, at this point, had carried him into the light again. Ikarus could almost _feel_ the fresh air, despite still being deep in Minos’ complex.

“Pretty light for your height. Didn’t feed ya much, did he?” Apollon questioned, to which Ikarus could only shake his head. Apollon’s hands tightened around him briefly, and a low rushing sound filled the space between them. Ikarus didn’t want to look away, _couldn’t_ stop looking at Apollon, even though the noise was familiar, tugged at something deep in his marrow, whispered of something dark and dangerous but Ikarus _wouldn’t look away from Apollon until he went blind or he died_.

“Nice meetin’ ya, Ikarus,” Apollon said, and the euphoria that filled Ikarus at hearing his name in Apollon’s mouth felt a lot like falling, and then Ikarus was burning, in the choking dark once more.

Ikarus had often been warned about the toxic sea by Daidalos. When he was young and ignorant, Daidalos had warned him off the black beaches with cautions of his own death. When he was slightly older and reckless, Daidalos turned to facts about the boiling point of oil, the toxicity of the fumes, the stories of the others stupid enough to fall or walk into it and died screaming.

~

Ikarus, at the moment his skin touched the oil, also screamed. He tore his throat bloody again screaming, and then he was choking as he sank into the burning, stinking, toxic oil. He tried to claw his way back up, but his eyes burned and were forced shut, and he had no idea which way was up anymore. He inhaled in panic, and managed to only choke on more burning oil. He could feel his flesh burning, could imagine it peeling away from his bones in this heat.

He wasn’t dying, though. Why wasn’t he dying? Shouldn’t he be dead by now? Daidalos had always described it as painful but quick _butDaidalosisn’thereanymore_ , gods, why _wasn’t he dead yet_?

The next thing Ikarus is aware of is a terrible itching all over his body and the heaving coughs wracking his body. His breathing is coming slightly easier, but still stings and aches in all the wrong places. His insides are warm while the rest of him is somehow freezing and burning at the same time. Vaguely, he hears people around him shouting, but he’s _still coughing_ and _he can’t breathe what the fuck is happening_ \--

Somebody lands a large, meaty slap across his back, just below the wing sockets, and a disgusting lump of something _black_ and _stinking_ launches from deep in his throat to land with a hideous splat on the ground below him.

~

Shuddering and disgusted, but able to breathe now, Ikarus heaves his head up to take in his new surroundings. Large, angry-looking men surrounded him, but Ikarus was too relieved to be breathing again and too tired from... _everything_ that he couldn’t muster the energy to be scared.

“--you should be dead! What was your fool ass doing going for a swim in this sea?!” Someone was shouting, the biggest and meanest looking of the bunch. Ikarus could hardly focus in on him _whywashiseyesightsoblurrydidtheroomfuckuphisvision_ \--

“My boys coulda had a good meal offa you, and yet you’re alive, somehow, and we’ve just wasted an hour saving your lily pale ass! Give us one good reason we still shouldn’t eat you screaming!” The man was still shouting, Ikarus’ head was pounding, and _he wanted to see Apollon again._

“W...where--” he tried to ask, but his throat still hadn’t quite recovered, and was sent off in another coughing fit.

“Kinda skinny, cap'n, he might only be good for a stew,” another voice said over his hacking. It finally clicked in Ikarus’ mind what they were talking about: _cannibalism_. They were planning, out loud, _in front of him_ , how to eat him.

 **I’m not going to die here to fester in these men’s stomachs** rang loud and clear through Ikarus’ mind, and the world narrowed down to the throat of the next man to speak.

Much later, chest heaving from exertion rather than drowning, covered in a fresh dress of redslick blood, Ikarus looked over the small loading bay of the ship. Carnage and viscera was scattered everywhere, nothing discernible as separate bodies to be found anywhere.

It was a small ship, crewed by maybe four or five men, from what he remembered. Wiping his mouth clean and picking at the... _bits_ stuck in his teeth, Ikarus took himself on a tour. He found it to be little more than a glorified shuttle, with barely enough space for _himself_ , let alone the group of hulking brutes he had just met. Barely space-worthy, but more importantly, she _was_ space worthy.

He ran a hand gently over the controls, streaking some blood over them and causing his newly regenerated skin to tingle slightly. He must’ve been hardly more than screaming red bones when the pirates picked him up, but Dr. Carmilla’s dread medicine worked its miracle: Ikarus was still alive, and he was in one piece. Mostly.

He stared out the viewport. His lips shaped the word ‘pirate’ once, twice, and then again thrice. His lips quirked in a sort-of smile. He could be a pirate. The sort-of smile faded as he mouthed another word: Apollon.

Who knew how long he’d been drowning in the burning oil sea? Who knew how far the pirates had traveled as he’d healed and berserked in their loading bay? The stars outside the ship were not the stars he recognized from Crete, and he saw no nearby planets, and the fuel was already half gone.

He coughed, slightly, something warmer than the cooled blood splattering the inside of his mouth and slowly trickling down his chin.

Well. Who knew how long Apollon had to live? Ikarus would live forever, and he needed to see Apollon again. He gripped the controls, with purpose this time, and grinned a dangerous gleam into the darkness of space.

He _would_ be seen by Apollon again.

**Author's Note:**

> you know how sometimes you get invested in a niche concept band with a group of online friends and then you decide to make OCs with that group of friends and then you get Overly Invested in your OCs for the niche concept band? Yeah that's what this is.  
> If this seems summary-ish that's because it is. Needed to get all this down for the discord and also myself to refer back to.


End file.
